Koster barely over DelBene: U.S. House poll

Democrats have moved ahead in major statewide races, but a new poll shows Republican John Koster clinging to a tiny lead in the hotly contested 1st District race for Congress.

Koster has a 46-42 percent lead over Democrat Suzan DelBene, with 12 percent undecided, in a SurveyUSA poll for KING-5 News. The newly reconfigured 1st District sprawls from Lummi Island and the U.S. Canada border south to the Snoqualmie Valley.

Koster is a Snohomish County Councilman and former dairy farmer, who lost 2000 and 2010 races to 2nd District Democratic Rep. Rick Larsen. He is an outspoken conservative and Tea Party ally. DelBene is a former Microsoft vice president who quit as State Revenue Director to make the race.

The poll comes as Democrats with the House Majority PAC launched a $380,000 anti-Koster TV campaign, keyed to women’s issues. It claims the Republican is “so radical it’s hard to believe” and would “criminalize a woman’s choice” and “defund Planned Parenthood.”

The poll results explain why Democrats are hitting Koster on issues of women’s rights, said Andy Stone of the House Majority PAC.

“She (DelBene) is down four to Koster and basically tied with him among women: She’s got to run up her numbers among women. Thus, our ad,” Stone explained in an e-mail.

Koster may have played into his foes’ campaign with a statement last week. It blasted DelBene for talking about “some imaginary ‘war on women'” when anti-American terrorism is on the rise.

But parts of the 1st District may be a bit resistant to the Democrats’ standard-issue contraception and abortion-based appeal.

The district includes Redmond, Kirkland and east King County technology centers. It also includes such conservative rural and exurban communities as Lynden, Darrington, Sedro Woolley, Sultan and Carnation.

“The fact is that John Koster knows very little about the southern part of the district and Suzan DelBene is clueless about the northern part of the district,” one veteran Republican strategist privately noted.

DelBene used more than $3 million of her own money to mount an advertising blitz in the primary, defeating the early Democratic favorite Darcy Burner.

She has spoken in modulated generalities about defending the middle class during hard times. Koster argues forcefully for less government and less regulation, but is avuncular and difficult to demonize at the personal level.